There are various forms of credit cards and debit cards available to consumers today. These forms include traditional magnetic stripe cards as well as more recently developed “smart cards” (or “chip cards”). A smart card includes an embedded integrated circuit (IC) chip that can provide enhanced security for authenticating credit and debit card transactions. Many smart cards in use today comply with the Europay, MasterCard and Visa (EMV) standards for inter-operations of IC cards, point-of-sale (POS) terminals and automated teller machines (ATMs). The EMV standards specify the interactions between the IC cards and IC card processing devices at the physical, electrical, data and application levels.
Under the EMV standards, an EMV card reader detects an inserted EMV card and supplies electrical power to the EMV card. By using power supplied by the EMV card reader during the transaction, the integrated circuit within the EMV card can perform various functions, such as transaction authentication and/or identity verification. However, a conventional EMV card is a passive device, which cannot operate on its own. Once the EMV card is removed from the EMV card reader, the integrated circuit of the EMV card cannot continue to perform any functionality, since it no longer has access to a power supply.